Flight from Brazil

When I opened the driver's side door, a guy fell out on the ground. Felicia's flashlight showed me the bullet hole in his forehead. There was no doubt that he was dead.

I hadn't been quite as accurate with the passenger, but I'd hit him with two of my three shots, once in the shoulder and once in the neck. He was obviously dead too. The man in the back seat had been hit six times, so he'd been hit by both of us. He wasn't breathing either.

Felicia said we had to put the driver back in the SUV, so between us, we did. Then she pushed his body onto the center console and drove the SUV until it was well off the highway and up against a tree. She left the engine running and went back to our car and got a towel out of the trunk. With the towel, she wiped down the steering wheel, door handles, and everything else we'd touched.

I asked her if we should pick up our brass, and she shook her head.

"All our ammunition is Brazilian Army issue ammunition. We'll leave it for the police to find. They'll think it was the Brazilian Army who did this, and won't do much more investigation. It's not so unusual as you may think. Brazil has improved a lot over the last several years, but before that, the Brazilian Army was basically the government. There are some who would like to return to those conditions. The police won't want to upset the military for fear of starting another coup, so they'll say the murders were the result of drugs or sex trafficking. Now, it's time to go."

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The cattle ranch was just that, but even though it was almost two in the morning when we rolled up to the house, two men ran out to meet us. I noticed both of them had pistols on their belts.

We were shown to separate bedrooms, and I didn't need any encouragement to fall asleep. After I laid down on the bed, the next thing I remember was Felicia shaking me. My watch said it was five in the morning. I felt like I'd just laid down.

"Get up. It's time we were going."

We didn't take Felicia's car this time. We rode in a beat up old pickup that ran like it was brand new. I was bone-tired, but I also had a lot of questions I needed Felicia to answer. I started by asking Felicia who she really worked for. She looked over at me and frowned.

"Right now, we need to get you out of Brazil. I'll answer all your questions after that."

She didn't say anything more for the rest of the four-hour drive to the second cattle ranch. I was too tired to stay awake, so I went to sleep. I woke up when Felicia shook me and said we were there.

That cattle ranch was a lot like the first. Two armed men came out to meet us and then took us to a large barn. Inside that barn was an older single engine Piper airplane. In red letters on the side of the tail was a logo and the words "Santa Cruz Exports".

Felicia and I climbed into the back seats. One of the men who met us climbed into the cockpit and the other opened the big barn doors. After the pilot did his pre-flight checks, we rolled out of the barn and onto a grass runway. A couple minutes later we were in the air and flying west.

After one fuel stop, this time at a soybean farm, we finally landed at Viru Viru International Airport in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. We didn't have to go through customs like I thought we would. We just pulled off the runway and then down the airport to a hangar with the same logo and name on the front.

Once we were inside the hangar, Felicia asked one of the men if everything was ready. When he nodded, she said, "We need to change clothes. Follow me."

Felicia led me down a hall in the front of the hangar and then stopped in front of a door that said, "Gerente de Transporte". My Portuguese phrase book translated that to "Transportation Manager".

"Inside is a bathroom with a shower. Take a shower and then open the suitcase on the desk. Pick something to wear, nothing formal, just dressy casual, and put all your dirty clothes including your shoes into the plastic bag on the chair. Once you've done that, wait here until I knock on the door."

With that, she walked down the hallway to another door and went inside.

Everything was just as Felicia had said. The shower had hot water, soap, and shampoo along with a razor and everything else I needed to feel human again. The suitcase surprised me. Inside were six pairs of slacks, six shirts, and a suit and tie with a white dress shirt along with underwear and socks. There were three pairs of shoes, a pair of leather running shoes, a pair of hiking boots, and a pair of black slip-on wingtips. Everything was my size.

I picked a blue shirt, jeans that looked like they'd been washed several times, and the leather running shoes. My old clothes went into the plastic bag, including the T-shirt with a couple of pretty large bloodstains on it that I hadn't noticed before. I closed up the suitcase then and sat down to wait on Felicia.

About half an hour later, there was a soft knock on the door to the office. When I opened it, I saw Felicia, but she wasn't the same Felicia I'd spent the last two days with.

That Felicia had worn a pair of jeans, a loose sweatshirt, and blue running shoes, and her hair was tied back in a ponytail. Now, she was wearing a blue dress with black heels and nylon stockings, and her long, black hair fell over her shoulders and down over her breasts in waves. She smiled and walked into the office pulling another suitcase of the same type as the one on the desk.

I say she walked, but that isn't a very good description. The dress fit her like a second skin and stopped half-way down her thighs, and the way she walked...well, I'd watched a lot of women walk, and most of them were at least a little sensuous. Felicia was way more than sensuous. The way her body moved fairly screamed sexuality at me. As if the way her hips swayed wasn't enough, her large breasts moved in the opposite direction from her hips, and since the dress was fairly low cut at the neck, her cleavage did some amazing things.

I already thought Felicia was a pretty woman, but with makeup and that luxurious mane of hair, she was a very feminine beauty with a wide mouth, arched eyebrows, and flashing dark brown eyes.

She asked if I was ready, and when I said I guessed I was, she waved her hand as she walked back out the door.

When we walked out of the hangar, there was a black Mercedes sedan waiting for us. The driver took our suitcases and put them in the trunk while we got into the back seat. When he got into the driver's seat, he handed Felicia a large manila envelope, then buckled his seat belt and started the Mercedes.

As the sedan pulled away from the hangar Felicia opened the envelope, looked inside, and then asked for my passport and my wallet. When I asked her why she wanted them, she smiled.

"There are things happening in Sao Paulo that will guarantee your safety, but until then, you have to become a different person. I have a new passport for you, a new Illinois Driver's License, and a credit card with your name. I need to take anything you have that could be used to identify you and give them to the driver for safekeeping until you leave."

I don't know if it was the stress of the past two days or if I was just having a hard time believing what was happening to me, but I lost it then.

"When I leave? What the hell does that mean? I thought I'd be back in Chicago by now, and I would have if I'd caught the flight I reserved. Instead, I helped you kill three men and I feel like a goddamned fugitive. It's time you told me what the hell is going on."

Felicia smiled.

"I'll tell you when I'm sure you're safe. Right now, we need to get to our apartment and get settled in."

I was still pissed.

"What do you mean by our apartment. Aren't we going to the airport?"

Felicia shook her head.

"No, we're going to an apartment for a week or two until things get settled in Sao Paulo. You've trusted me so far. You need to trust me a little longer."

Well, I really didn't have much choice, so I handed Felicia my passport, my wallet, and because I couldn't get the ID tag off my key ring, my car and apartment keys. She took another US passport from the envelope and handed it to me, then opened my wallet and took out my driver's license and the two credit cards. Then she replaced them with another driver's license and a Visa credit card, and stuffed in several bolivianos, the currency of Bolivia.

She did the same thing with her own passport and identification, put our old passports and cards into the envelope and handed it back to the driver, then turned to me.

"Until you leave Bolivia, you're not Blake Robinson. You're Bill Roberts and you're in Santa Cruz with your wife on vacation. You own an import business in Chicago called "South American Imports", and you're a wealthy man who enjoys the finer things in life. I am Belinda Roberts, your wife. That's how we'll check into the apartment and how we'll live until it's safe for you to go back to Chicago. That Visa card has a twenty thousand-dollar limit, so don't be stingy when you order meals. We're supposed to be having a great time.

"We'll be staying in the same apartment suite because we're man and wife. We don't believe Daniels has connections in Bolivia, so his men probably won't look for you here, but if they should, they'll be looking for one man by himself. They won't be looking for a married couple.

"This should all be over in about a week, but if it takes longer, you'll just have to put up with me. I'm not going to put you on a plane to Chicago until I'm sure you'll be safe."

When we got to the apartment building, the woman at the desk smiled and said they'd gotten my reservation and had our suite ready. I gave her the Visa card and hoped it wouldn't be rejected. It wasn't, and after I signed the register as Bill Roberts, a bellhop picked up our suitcases and started for the elevator.

Writers don't typically have a lot of money to spend, so I'd never stayed in a hotel suite before, but I'd seen pictures of them. The suite where we were to stay was way more than any of the pictures I'd seen. It had two bedrooms, a living room, and a bath with a huge bathtub. It also had a small kitchen with a refrigerator. Inside that refrigerator was a selection of soft drinks, some mixers, and six bottles of a local white wine.

The bellhop sat our suitcases down and then looked at me. I had no idea how much Bolivian money was worth relative to US dollars, so I wasn't sure how much to tip him. Felicia walked up to me and said, "Honey, isn't this beautiful", and then kissed me on the cheek before she whispered, "Give him a hundred from your wallet". Once I did that, the bellhop smiled and left.

Felicia sat down on the leather couch and stretched.

"It feels so good to get out of a car for a change. I'm also starved. There's a small but nice restaurant not far from here. Let's go have lunch."

The menu was all in Spanish but my high school Spanish failed me. I could read the words but had no idea about what those words really described. Felicia gave me a suggestion for what I should order.

"You should try the pique macho. It's unique to Bolivia and was invented when several drunk men came to a restaurant late one night. The cook didn't have much food left, but the men said they would eat anything she could fix.

"She put together what she had -- some beef, some sausage, red and green peppers and a few other things she had left - and said to the men, 'piquen si son machos', meaning if you're man enough, you can eat this. It's usually made with hot chilies, but if you don't like hot chilies, you can just say no picante. Oh, the plate will be huge, so it would be better if we share one. There's no way either of us could eat a whole plate of pique macho."

The pique macho was different but good, especially since I hadn't had a lot to eat over the last two days. We still didn't finish the one plate. I don't know how anybody could eat all that by themselves.

When I paid the check, Felicia said she thought she'd like a drink, so we went from the restaurant to a nearby bar. There was nobody else in the place, but Felicia said we were too early for most people. She also suggested what I should order.

You have to try a sucumbé. You might not get another chance."

Sucumbé turned out to be pretty good. It was sort of like warm eggnog, but with a Bolivian brandy called singani instead of bourbon. The bartender didn't skimp on the singani when he mixed ours. After the first one, I was pretty relaxed.

Apparently, singani didn't affect Felicia the same way, because when we finished our cups, she flagged down the bartender and asked him to make two more. I was half drunk by the time we finished the second.

We walked back to our apartment then, and once inside, Felicia kicked off her shoes and plopped down on the couch. When she did, her short dress rode up her thighs until I could see her stocking tops and a little of the garters that held them up.

Felicia looked at me for a few seconds and then smiled.

"It looks like you like what you see."

If I hadn't been half drunk, I'd probably have had a better comeback.

"Yes, you're a pretty woman when you're not crawling through coffee trees or shooting at men."

Felicia patted the couch beside her.

"Come sit down. You're making me tired just watching you stand up."

When I sat down beside her, Felicia put her hand on my knee and gently squeezed it.

"You're a lot different than I first thought too. I thought you'd be some guy with thick glasses who couldn't do much besides write stories. You proved me wrong out there on the highway last night."

I shrugged.

"What I did wasn't new to me. I'd been in similar situations in Iraq and I didn't really have a choice. After the machine gun fire at the house and that first shot through the car, I decided it was like you said. I could either try to take them out or I could die. I wasn't ready to die."

Her hand moved a little up my thigh.

"Why you did it doesn't matter. The fact that you did means you're more of a man than most. I want a man to act like a man...like you did. I could never respect a man who runs away when he should fight back. You didn't run, so..."

Felicia moved her hand up a little more and leaned over so her face was about an inch from mine.

"Do you understand what I'm saying?"

I did understand. I just didn't know what had changed.

"I thought your goal was to get me back to the US."

Felicia put her cheek against mine and whispered, "It still is, just not right now. Right now, I need to feel like a woman instead of a bodyguard."

In the process of writing one of my novels, I'd done some pretty extensive research into how women react to situations that are tense and require extreme concentration on what is going on around them. Most women will try to get through the situation and when it's over, they release the build up of tension by becoming emotional and breaking into tears. Some very strong women react by doing whatever is required to get through the situation and then need to have an outlet for all the built up tension. Sometimes that outlet is sex.

Felicia was definitely a strong woman and I was becoming very attracted to her. Maybe that was because she was very sensuous as well as strong, I don't know, but the attraction was there and there was no way I could resist it.

I gently pushed her back a little.

"Your bedroom or mine?"

While Felicia had been a very take-charge type of woman up until that point, once we were in my bedroom, she pulled the sheet and blanket on my bed down to the foot, then put her arms around my neck again and said, "Make me feel like a woman". Then, she pulled herself against me and kissed me.

Her dress came off pretty easily since it was made of a stretchy material. I just lifted the hem and while Felicia held her arms over her head, I pulled it up and then off. After I tossed it on a chair, she put her arms around my neck again and kissed me while I unhooked her bra. When I broke the kiss, she stepped back and shrugged the bra off her shoulders and down her arms.

Her breasts were big enough they slipped down a little when they came out of Felicia's bra cups, but her nipples pointed straight out. She shuddered a little when I ran my fingertips over the small, darker nubs, and then shuddered again when I bent down and kissed her right nipple.

I kissed her left nipple as I rolled the black thong panties down over her hips, then worked them down her thighs and let them fall down to her feet. After that, Felicia slipped out of her heels, laid back on my bed, and raised her legs so I could take her panties off the rest of the way.

As I said before, in that blue dress, Felicia had been all feminine, sensuous woman. Lying there naked on my bed, she was still feminine and sensuous, but she was also very erotic. I hadn't taken off her stockings and what I was seeing just under the garter belt that held them up was a thick thatch of black hair that covered her mound and then dipped down to fringe both of the long, slender lips between her thighs.

Felicia held out her arms then, and after taking off my clothes as fast as possible I knelt on the bed beside her. With her eyes almost closed and her lips parted, Felicia whispered, "I want you, Blake, and I want all of you, so don't hold back."

I did hold back because I had to. As soon as I touched her bare breasts, Felicia moaned a tiny little moan and then spread her thighs wide. The sight of the pink skin between her lips when they opened had my cock stiff and wanting to be stroking inside her. I couldn't let that happen, not then, not until I knew she was ready.

She got there a lot faster than the other women I'd been with. Sucking her nipples until they were taut and stiff made her begin lifting her hips up off the bed. Slipping a finger between her hair-fringed lips made her catch her breath and then pull me down so she could kiss me. I had to remind myself to go slow when she pushed her little tongue between my lips. I'm pretty sure we both gasped then.

She felt snug around my middle finger, snug but wet and slippery. When I stroked that wetness up to her clit, she gasped again and her body lurched up. I tried slipping two fingers into her entrance and she gasped again, but didn't try to stop me. Instead, she jerked her body up and basically impaled herself on my fingers.

I sort of lost track of everything after that because Felicia moved her soft hand down between us, found my cock, and began stroking it. For each stroke I made with my fingers, she'd stroke my cock. Each time I'd move those fingers up and straddle her clit with them, Felicia would gasp, then hold her breath while she pulled on my cock.

After one of those moments when I was stroking both sides of her clit and sucking her right nipple at the same time, Felicia whispered, "I can't wait any longer. Do it now."

She raised her knees when I knelt between her legs and then held out her arms again. I leaned forward enough to get my cock head between her now swollen and puffy lips, and pushed in gently. Felicia moaned and thrust her hips up, and my cock slid inside her a little. She gasped, dropped her hips down, and then held her breath as she lifted them again while I pushed gently. After three of these attempts, my cock went inside Felicia all the way, and I felt my balls touch her hips.

Felicia moaned when that happened and then put her hands on my back. As I started stroking my cock in and out, she stroked my back and nibbled at my lips until I kissed her.

After that, it was just two people trying hard to pleasure each other. Felicia wasn't obvious about it. She didn't say anything. She just kept lifting herself into my strokes and using her hands to pull on my hips when I stroked in. Once in a while, I'd feel her passage tighten up on my cock as I was stroking out.